When you're first starting an online business, it can be a struggle finding the money to invest in the things that will grow your business most. Only later do you discover things all the guru's know that could have saved you a small fortune. Here are a few things that will help you save on Internet marketing business necessities.
In order to be in business on the Internet you DO need a website. Hosting that website doesn't need to cost you an arm and a leg. Here are two ways to save:
1) Don't register your domain through your web host. Instead go to a discount registrar. Your web host will charge you up to $40 or more (per year) just to conveniently handle your domain name registration. You can register or renew your domain name yourself for as little as $8 per year. I've set up a service for my subscribers and clients to do just that at:
http://WillieCrawford.com/domains/
How am I able to offer you such a bargain? I have a domain name reseller account at Wild West Domains. For around $100 per year, practically anyone can become a domain name reseller. You are charged a wholesale price for domain name registrations (and other services offered on my site above). You decide how much you want to mark up your prices above that. I have practically no markup because I enjoy helping beginners get off to a good start. I know that you'll be back for other products and services that I offer - after you're a big success :-)
2) Consider getting a web hosting account here:
http://www.profitautomation.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=119107
I have an account that lets me host up to 50 domains for only $109 per month. That equates to about $2 per domain, per month. The $109 package that I have gives me 4400 meg of disk space and 100 gigabytes of monthly bandwidth to spread among my 50 domains in that account any way that I want to.
The account above is intended for people who want to open their own web-hosting business. Basically, you can get one of these accounts and then charge your online or local customers whatever price you choose. Find 50 local customers and charge them $100 each and you've just turned $109 into $5000. That's a nice monthly revenue stream and it's also in-line with what offline businesses expect to pay.
The above account isn't for everyone. It doesn't come with a lot of free tech support. You have to go through some online tutorials and then you're the tech support. If you need help, you can get it through an online forum or through a trouble ticket system (where you pay by the minute). When one of your customers needs help, their trouble tickets go to you. If you pass them along to the parent company, you are billed by the minute.
I use the above account to host many of my own domains. I have numerous very simple sites that are only a few pages. Some are only a one-page sales letter. I save a bundle by paying only $2 per month to host these. When you're paying only $2 per month for hosting you don't need to make a lot of sale for a site to be profitable.
Another necessity is basic Internet access. For that I use my local cable company but I also have a backup dialup connection. That account, which offer decent service cost me less than $10 per month. Because I transfer many 30 meg or larger files back and forth regularly, this account probably isn’t robust enough to be my primary. However, my local cable company does sometimes have outages for various reasons. That's when I use this dialup account most. I also use it sometimes while I'm traveling. You can checkout the company I use at:
http://47928.yourdialupservice.com/
They offer thousands of local access numbers in the U.S. and Canada.
I have not located a comparable resource for outside the U.S. and Canada, but will pass it along when I do.
Another way to save big is to get your own merchant account. When you use Paypal or Clickbank, your initial investment may be less. However you pay much higher processing fees, and your less professional appearance DOES cost you sales. Savvy customers who understand Clickbank and Paypal will recognize that you're not processing enough volume to consider a merchant account worthwhile. They may consider you an amateur that they don't want to risk major purchases with.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't use Paypal or Clickbank when you first start out and you're not confident that your product will even sell. I AM saying that "when you're ready to run with the big dogs, you need to look like one of them." Top marketers that I know who are processing tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of dollars per month in credit card transactions use: http://WarriorProcessing.com
Take a look at the site and you'll see why it's who we use.
As you get your online business rolling, the other thing you'll need is traffic. When you first get started, the fastest way to get it is from the pay-per-clicks. I use Google AdWords to drive initial traffic to all of my sites when I need that traffic fast. That allows me to quickly get enough traffic to test and improve my conversion rate. None of the other pay-per-clicks usually deliver the volume of traffic that I want quickly enough.
After I refine things using Google AdWords, I do set up accounts at some of the other pay-per-clicks. I use Google AdWords at first because I place a very high value on my time and I don't want to spend months just getting enough traffic to refine the sales process on a single site.
Unless you have lots of free time, I wouldn't waste time on any other traffic source initially EXCEPT for the one I am using right here. Writing and submitting articles to ezines and article directories has proven the single best source of free traffic for me. It works so well that I've written over 300 articles on various aspect of Internet marketing. To prove that this works, just enter my name at any search engine. You'll see millions of returns and most of them are simply from my article writing activities.
The other thing that will save you time is studying and practicing copywriting. Minor improvement in your web copy can easily increase your conversion rate by 100 times. Not learning copywriting is practicing false economy for most of us. If only 1 out of every 200 visitors to your site buys and just by changing a headline you can change that to 1 in 20, that shows just how important copywriting is. There have been countless documented cases of people getting improvements this dramatic from minor but important improvement in their web copy.
To learn copywriting, I went through and highly recommend Yanik Silver's Ultimate At-Home Internet Copywriting Workshop. This will be your largest initial expense, but it's a necessary one. Words sell, and if you're not willing to learn to use words properly in your marketing, then you probably shouldn't waste time setting up a website.
You can get all of the details on this course at:
http://www.ultimateonlinecopymanual.com
We've just gone over a number of way that you can dramatically cut the expenses associate with operating your online business. I'm willing to bet that I've just told you things that NO ONE else has told you. They aren't all trying to take advantage of you. However, they are hoping that out of ignorance you'll spend more on the same items through them. Save that money and plow it back into growing your business.
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